dynavector 20x or grado sonata

The output is 2.8 mV, but that has little-to-nothing to do with sound quality. If anything, lower output carts (moving coil) have less mass to move which allows them to track the better and bring out more detail. The question is whether your phono stage has enough gain to work with this cart. What are you using for a phono preamp?

The 20XH is smoother than the Sonata and I think it sounds better. Give it a try.

The Grado Sonata is a musical cartridge, however, when comparing it to the Dyna it sounds grainy, fuzzy, and brown in color. Unless you AB them, they will both suffice. Make sure that your preamp can handle the lower output of the Dyna or the misconnection will swamp any benefit.

thanks guys i have a mcintosh c41 pre amp not sure if it will have the gain to run a high output coil i now have acoustic feed back at the 1 oclock with the grado so i dont no what to do any more

It's only a 6dB drop and depending on where your volume knob currently is rotated, this might be an advantage.

Some of the issues related to gain requirements are dependent on how quiet your phono stage is.

If things get noisy with your volume control at 1 o'clock, then your solution may differ from that of someone who's phono stage is quiet with their volume knob in this position.

In general, you get the best sound out of your system when you burn off theleast amount of signal - having a system gain structure that allows you to keep the volume knob position turned up fairly high when listening at your perferred volume.

There's a lot more to it than that, but you should consider the above as a part of making an informed decision.

For anyone who's interested, I have some information on my forum on understanding the gain structure of your system. You can browse over here if you're interested:

http://www.galibierdesign.com//phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=35

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

I missed your 1 o'clock comment, even though I used this volume position as a baseline assumption for the discussion.

Acoustic feedback is a separate issue from whether you have enough gain.

It sounds however that 1 o'clock is your "rock the house" listening setting. I'd guess that you're at the margin of being able to halve the output of your cartridge and still play as loud as you like.

If you feel as if you have enough headroom for all of your listening needs (e.g. 3 o'clock is noticably louder than 1 o'clock), then you might just squeeze by with the Dyna (a very nice cartridge, if I do say so myself).

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier